TLDP Ch. 87: Ambush? Counter-ambush!

Lately, I’ve thought about whether to help He Xue. And I decided to help her, but if I was risking my life then I’d back out. I didn’t want to say all of this where I was. However, since I was on a bus, I said, “I’m on the bus right now. I’ll be at the hotel in two hours, let’s talk in person.”

The opponent is a wizardry practitioner whom I’ve never seen, but I know his poisoning skills and skeleton puppet were almost strong enough to kill me.

It wouldn’t be bad to have He Xue owe me a favor though; I can use this to get her help later. The last time I went to jail, I could have been released with one call from He Xue.

It was around noon when I got to the hotel. He Xue was waiting for me in the lobby. So I walked over toward her.

No one sat nearby, so I whispered to her. “I’ve decided to help you, but if thing get too crazy I’ll back out. I don’t want to die for this.”

“Fine.” He Xue nodded. “It’s not as complicated as you think, as long as we don’t give him time to do the poisoning or wizardry, we can get him. He’s still flesh and blood, bullets will make a hole in his body. I noticed he’s always in the woods on the north side of town every night. I didn’t want to alert him, so I’ve just watched and not followed him.”

“What are you planning?”

“We’ll go to the woods tonight and wait for him, when he shows up, we’ll ambush him!”

……………………

Eight-thirty at night.

Today was cloudy, the moon is masked behind the clouds. The ground is pitch black; with no light in the forests, we couldn’t see anything, but this also helps with our cover.

What makes me wonder is why this wizard comes here every night? Is he growing something here? I hope tonight goes well. I want to catch him soon, to stop him from harming more people, and to make He Xue owe me a favor.

Based on what He Xue has seen for the last two nights, Ma Xiujun comes around 9 PM from this one side of the forest, which is where we’re hiding. He Xue said we needed to get him alive, so she gave me a few syringes of strong anesthetic, enough to knock someone out for three days!

Because our opponent practices wizardry, I told Big Sis to hide too. I also put on some cattle tears and brought a big hammer. If I ran into another skeleton puppet, I could crush it!

Winters in Qiling City are brutally cold, even though I was physically strong and was dressed in thick layers, I still felt my feet freezing and was cold all-over.

Just as I was feeling inpatient, soft footsteps walked toward us. I stayed behind the tree and counted the steps, deciding when to launch my attack.

As the steps got closer to me and the tree, I took out the syringe, took off the needle cover, and jumped out from behind the tree. I was going to stab him with the syringe before he knew what’s happened!

But…

There’s no one around!

How is this possible? I heard the footsteps!

As I was standing there, feeling bewildered, a whooshing sound came from behind me!

Alarmed, I ducked to the side.

I turned to look. There is someone standing where I was before. It’s so dark in the woods I can’t see the person’s face.

I was going to ambush him, but never had I thought I would be counter-ambushed!

He’s lightning fast, before I knew what was going on, he has circled back behind me and is striking me!

I kept retreating, but he still outpaced me. His fists have come up right in front of me. I freaked out and raised my arms to shield myself.

“Peng!”

His fist landed on my arm, where the metal is. The blow was powerful enough to make me receded backward and pressed sat down on the ground.